Net Worth: October 2014 Progress

About that spending going down… Not so much. Also, a baby is born, the market rebounds, and I hope for a stop to the constant bills.

The Numbers

For background on the methodology and definitions, see Net Worth: September 2013 Progress. I’m including the past two months for comparisons now, but the “difference” values are computed for the past month’s changes.

Analysis

The Month

Last month I anticipated that the spending spree had ended. How naive I was! Our daughter was born so we have some hospital and doctor bills that needed to get paid, and starting off the month of November I’ve already had to replace a furnace at one of our rentals and have basement windows scheduled to be replaced at the other. One of the windows’ glass panes broke and when I tried to take it out to get repaired the frame just crumbled away. Looks like all the basement windows are rotted out and need replacement on this 100 yr old house. And what is just around the corner? Christmas! So I guess the bills just keep coming. All I can say is that I’m very lucky to be well compensated, or I’d be drowning in bills and depleting my taxable investment account to pay them all.

Thankfully the market was back up in October, with the S&P 500 Index up 2.13% for the month. That did a lot to help boost up my assets and net worth this last month. In addition, I contributed $3,000 to my Roth IRA, ~$2,100 to my 401k and had ~$450 worth of reinvested dividends and capital gains at month’s end. If you discount the contributions, my returns are pretty much in line with the index.

So far this year I’ve maxed out my wife’s Traditional IRA ($5,500), contributed $3,000 of $5,500 max in my Roth IRA, and I’m at about ~$15,500 of the $17,500 max for my 401k. That means we’ve saved ~$21,000 for retirement this year. I’ll definitely be maxing my 401k, but maxing the Roth and adding some contributions to my son’s 529 might prove to be harder. Luckily I can do my IRA up until April 15th, not the calendar year end. In an ideal world we’d max the 401k, both IRAs, and the max state deductible amount in the 529 ($10,000 for married couples in NY state). That’d be $38,500 total, which may be achievable if we tried hard, but with all these expenses cropping up and my extra principal payments on the townhouse rental, it’s proving to be more than we’ve been able to do.

On the negative side, I finally updated the mileage on the CX-5 in Mint, and it happily dropped the worth of the car by a pretty good chunk. So while it’s value went down rapidly here, the reality is that it’s been constantly dropping in value over the course of the year. That’s why they tell you to buy used! Let someone else handle that quick depreciation for you!

The rise in credit card balances reflects mostly the extra hospital/doctor bills for the birth of our daughter over our typical spending.